How can a human being be illegal?
When I was old enough, I was 21 years of age, I decided to come to America. I did it illegally, so I jumped the border. I didn't speak any English.
When I come to the United States, I came here illegally. I didn't know I was going to be a fighter. I just thought I was going to work landscaping for, I don't know, three, four years, then go back to Brazil and live my life.
Let's not confuse the words immigrant and alien.
What person here illegally (and in his right mind), will go to the government, announce being here illegally (e.g. plead guilty), provide all sorts of information as to where that person lives etc. to get a work permit only to be a target for deportation in two years?
My grandfather was an undocumented immigrant. My great-grandmother, my bisabuela, carried him over the border in her arms.
I'm not excusing the illegal act. I am here illegally. I'm here illegally, without authorization. That's a fact. That's nothing you can call the Orwellian cops about. But I am a human being, so therefore I am not illegal. That's also a fact.
I'm an illegal alien and have been for many years. If you rub my skin, I go green.
On my father's side, I'm descended from immigrants, one of whom was a Syrian refugee from the Armenian genocide, and my mother was an immigrant from Germany whose visa had expired and, for a year and change, was undocumented here in the U.S.
I began teaching in New York because I needed to stay in the United States and didn't have my immigration papers in order, so working for a university was a way of resolving the issue.
I was an illegal alien for many, many years. I couldn't move. If I moved I could not even get a visa back.
I have no nationality, no country.
My father, who worked as a dishwasher, was especially anxious. He did not like being here undocumented.
When one refers to an immigrant as an "illegal alien," one is using the term as a noun. The user of the term is effectively saying that the individual, as opposed to any actions that the individual has taken, is illegal. The term “illegal alien” implies that a person’s existence is criminal. I’m not aware of any other circumstance in our common vernacular where a crime is considered to render the individual – as opposed to the individual’s actions – as being illegal. We don’t even refer to our most dangerous and vile criminals as being “illegal” people.
The best migrant is the migrant who does not come.
My grandfather was an illegal immigrant for the 60 or so years he was in the United States. I had another great-great-grandmother on my mom's side who snuck in in a suitcase.
It is not 'dehumanizing' to call someone an illegal immigrant if he/she resides in the host country illegally.
I got here when I was 12, I found out I was undocumented when I was 16, I became a journalist when I was 17, and all I ever did was write other stories to run away from myself.
On the surface, I've created a good life. I've lived the American dream. But I am still an undocumented immigrant.
I found out that I was illegal when I was 16. I'm gay. I'm Filipino.
I was an illegal immigrant.
For decades, I have cringed whenever someone called me 'illegal,' as if I'm an insect on someone's back. I found out I didn't have the right papers - that I was here illegally - when I tried to get a driver's permit at age 16. But I am not 'illegal.' No person is.
As I graduated from public schools and started working in newsrooms, I told myself that I am only the 'illegal' that my own country has not bothered to get to know.
